Perhaps it's not fair for me to reply, since I see about zero chance
I'll be a user of hamlet in the near future. That's less about the
Hamlet syntax, and more about me being hopeless at visual design.
But IMO, when you're not planning on being compatible with something,
the further you are away from it, the better. The worst possible
situation for a new language is to look almost exactly like an existing
widely used standard, but then have a bunch of tricky pitfalls so that
if someone thinks in terms of that standard, they will grow frustrated
and hate you.
So I don't know where Hamlet fits in there, but the idea that you want
Hamlet to look more like HTML to lure over HTML developers, but then not
really be the same thing.... might be considered worrisome. You should
at least think through what the experience would be like for someone who
insists on the belief that they are writing "HTML with quirks".
I do think, just as a general rule, that '%' is ugly. Almost as ugly as
'@'. But actual concerns ought to trump that.
--
Chris